breakfast burritos

We all know the feeling. Groggy, bleary eyed, emerging from the safe cocoon of blissful (or not so) slumber after a heavy night on the tiles. Dry mouthed, a hefty mug of tea or coffee is downed to kickstart the tastebuds and unstick the eyelids. Once Gandhi’s flipflop has been rinsed off, it’s time to move onto some energising fuel to deal with the trials of showering and engaging in any form of meaningful communication….

What’s your brunch of fancy? And we’re talking home cooked. No venturing outside my dears, not yet anyway. My personal favourites have got to be; a bagel, split and toasted, both halves spread first with butter, then Marmite, then a hefty squeedge of cream cheese with a sprinkling of rocket on top. I know it sounds lunchy but this is brunch innit, we can go off piste! Equally bon is a couple of poached eggs with lots of cracked black pepper atop two slices of granary toast, again with plenty of butter and Marmite. Delishybags. I’m not a huge meat fan, so bacon and sausages are usually off the menu, but I am partial to some crispy bacon with mashed avocado and a poached egg on toast, should there happen to be some pig in the fridge.

This weekend, having mates to stay over after a post pub sesh, I was inspired to stock the fridge with essential ingredients to make breakfast burritos. Introduced to the BB via my good friend Lex, they are the perfect mix of flavour and texture, protein and veg, with a hint of a spicy kick to get you on form. They’re remarkably healthy too (if you grill the bacon and don’t overload on the cheese!) and the tortilla wrap doesn’t weigh you down like a doughy bagel or a stack of pancakes. I wanted to share them with the world. Definitely worth a try this weekend…

prep stage

You’ll need:

Tortilla wraps (white)

Eggs

Bacon

Potatoes (King Edward or other floury variety)

Avocado

Grated cheese

Salsa

Cherry tomatoes

Onion

Fresh red chilli

Sour cream (optional)

Simply peel and dice the potato, boil until softly tender, then fry with some finely sliced onion and chilli with spices of your choice (try salt, pepper, mild curry powder and turmeric).

Grill the bacon and scramble the eggs.

Warm the wraps in the oven while you’re doing the above.

When the hot bits are cooked, it’s time to assemble. Layer the egg, bits of bacon and some diced spuds in a line down the middle of the wrap. Add the tomatoes. Sprinkle over with cheese.

Smear some mashed avocado, salsa and sour cream down either side of this line so when you wrap you’ll get a nice even mixture of everything.

Finally chuck on shredded lettuce.

Roll up and enjoy! Yummsville.

happy days

les trois garcons

What a night! It was the perfect threesome - myself, the lovely Libby and some damn fine food.
The boudoir? Les Trois Garcons, Shoreditch. A heady mix of decadent French restaurant and Miss Haversham's attic, richly decorated with chandeliers, handbags hanging from the ceiling and other such quirky artwork. A taxidermist's wet dream; bulldogs with angel wings, a giraffe's long neck stretching over diners, crocodiles in crowns and tigers in tiaras...

monkey see...

'The 3 lads' certainly ticks the boxes when it comes to authentic French dining with excellent service, all dished up with a healthy dollop of arty weirdness. With a price tag to match, Les Trois Garcons is surely a treat for local trendsters. But with a good old Groupon voucher clutched in naughty mitts, we headed in for a superb six course taster menu for a snip at £30 each, down from the usual £80.
I'm a real Groupon cynic and am fully aware of the pitfalls of a 'free meal' - stingy portions, snooty service and all too often hidden charges. This was not one of those. Beautiful food and warm and welcoming staff made the experience a real pleasure from start to finish. It's a great way for them to boost mid week trade as you can't book the deal on weekends. And coupled with the usual pricey wine list (a bottle of the cheapest red, a decent Côtes Du Ventoux 2009 set us back £25) and a 15% service charge (that's 15% of the original menu price ie: a tip added on of about £20), they do recoup costs elsewhere. However the tip is discretionary and for a night of fayne dining, truly affordable. Keep your eyes peeled for those deals!

We began the starry sups with an amuse bouche of thinly sliced roast chicken on a light crisply salted sheet of won ton, accompanied with caramelised onions and a basked of freshly baked bread with butter. Nothing too punchy, it did the job - it amused the bouche and tickled the tastebuds. (Apologies for the dingy photography, as you can imagine, cameraphones and a looming stuffed narwhal do not a bright picture make...)

amusing

This was swiftly followed by a beautifully presented circle of foie gras, cured in Sauternes and cooked au torchon, served with toasted brioche and apple chutney, with a swirl of toffee sauce. I'm a guilty fan of foie gras when served in it's meaty pâté like form with thin little slices of melba toast. I'll never forget after just arriving in France, when visiting a hugh Auchan supermarket (the equivalent of a big Tesco) I was handed tasters of foie gras of all things (!) while shopping. Beats the lump of cheddar of the day on the deli counter. Needless to say I went back and back and back.... When served with fruit (and again, my fave is anything apple based) the rich meat flavour becomes fresh and satisfying. It ticked all the boxes, and I think this actually rated as my favourite course of the six...

foie good

Lemon sole came next, a good sized piece of fish accompanied with a sweetly seared scallop, pear barley risotto and a lemon butter sauce. Light and healthy tasting, the fourth course then switched the balance with four rounds of juicy duck magret served with swede gratin, green beans and a luscious truffle red wine jus. The crispy crackling around the edges of the morsels of duck gave way to a smear of juicy fat and then tender flesh, and the swede kept the dish on the right side of ribsticking. There was also a mystery element to number four. Get Inspecteur Barnaby in. We think it was a piece of fried foie gras, at least it had that light and squidgy consistency and flavour. Who knows? But it was bloody good with the veg.

duck

fish

By now we were beginning to slow. Luckily the wine and table water, and good pacing between dishes, kept us forging forwards. Time for a sweet treat - moelleux of chocolate (like a solid mousse) filled with popping candy gave an unexpected crackle and kiddy giggles, and came with a nice but unremarkable chocolate brownie. Dusted with icing sugar and dotted with whisky soaked raisins, this hugely rich course would have been offset nicely with a good dessert wine. Our choice of vin was a light accompaniment for both the meat and fish but punters can also opt for the restaurants own wine pairing per course, at an additional £39. I would defnitely go for the three G's recommendations next time around to get full enjoyment and appreciation between chaque plat.

choco, choco, lat

Petits fours saved the day, in the shape of a mini almond cookie, a petite madeleine with passion fruit cream and a truly beaut little square of white chocolate mousse cake topped with banana cream, which blended together in the mouth like a condensed milky pillow. A lovely fruity finish to cleanse the palate and round off the meal. Délicieux.

petit six

The point of a taster menu is to get the full gamut of the restaurant's capabilities, a showcase of what the chef can offer. Les Trois Garcons certainly delivered on this point, and we left feeling nicely full and well treated, having set the world and our tummies to rights over the course of a good 3 hours. Bon bon.

Have you had the joy of a top class yet affordable taster menu à Londres? Tweet me back @maratanga and spill the beans, or leave a comment underneath!

up brockenback mountain

The proposition of an impromptu trip to Germany initially left me feeling - well - nichts much. A self confessed Francophile, I am generally biased towards France, Spain and Italy. Germany has never really appealed if I'm honest.
Due to meet a very lovely old friend in her German boyfriend's hometown near Hannover, I googled said city and read the usual (museums, gardens, church, river, zoo…) Expecting a weekend of generally pleasant sightseeing, supping kaffee und kuchen and laughing at unfeasibly long German nouns was about the sum of what I expected during my Deutsche weekend. How wrong I was.

ilsenburg lake

view from the brocken

First off, Hannover was a distant 2 hour drive away from the picturesque small town of Ilsenburg, nestling at the north foot of the Harz mountains. No busy roads, thronging tourists, overpriced schnitzel here - just simply beautiful Hansel & Gretel style houses, all with their own burst of individuality and painstakingly tended gardens awash with colour and quirky touches. So peaceful as to be almost silent, we hardly ever saw people walking through the streets - far from being eerie (although a few Fritzl comments were made - cellars anyone?!) this lent the town an olde worlde feel. People just generally seemed happy pottering in their homes and gardens, at one with nature. Excess water was all collected in butts for gardens, there's no wastage - herbs are hung up to dry, berries left fermenting in bottles for home brewed booze. Swans paddled slowly across the big lake in the town centre, as the sun shone over lush woodland rising up the mountains beyond. Enough of the picture painting - lets get down to the heart of the matter - the food.

For someone who loves cheese and bread, a German breakfast ticked all the right boxes for me - freshly baked rolls and rye bread with butter and homemade jams, fresh fruit, ham and cheeses of all varieties was a hearty way to start the day and fuel us for mountain climbing up the aptly named Brocken (back), the highest peak in the Harz mountain range. We hopped on a steam train which wound it's way up to the summit, where we watched a load of sorry souls reaching the halfway point of an ardous marathon and being whacked on the bum with a broom by the legendary Brocken witch. Lunch at the top of the mountain consisted of a savoury warming Kartoffelsuppe, a potato broth, with the most wonderfully creamy rice pudding or Milchreis, I have ever had the fortune to sample. Topped with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar and a slick of cherry or apple compote I was honoured to be eating not only the best rice pud ever but the highest in Northern Germany…

ambrosia

Walking back down the mountain took it's toll on my knees, however we diverged from the beaten track onto the soft floor of the dense woodland, stepping on lichen, fern and an abundance of wild mushrooms. The national parkland that surround Ilsenburg is full to bursting with gourmet shrooms, including chanterelle and porcini, which sell for a handsome price to the surrounding high class restaurants. Accompanied by a pilz expert, I was shown how to hunt down the vivid orange hue of the pfifferlinge and how to twist and pull it from the earth, dust and cut it's stem and check for worms/dryness/age. I also discovered the pepperpilz, a spicy tasting mushroom, the blood mushroom with a reddy orange stem, the hex mushroom which turns a witchy blue when cut, the devil and goat's lip mushrooms and a plump specimen which only 10% of the population find deadly… I also found a giant porcini the size of my foot, or bigger, which gave me the giggles.
With a bag full of chanterelles, the tip from the top was to fry them lightly with some butter and garlic, and eat simply with pasta, a dash of cream and a sprinkling of chives. Divine.

the forest

chanterelling hard

The Germans love their soup. We had our fair share of supping suppe when sitting down to have drinks al fresco, as we ordered from an extremely limited bar menu. Thin, watery soup with processed noodles and veg, a meaty concoction and what can only be described as a bowl of lardons coated in thick cream and melted cheese, were presented to us with local beer. Oddly enough the soups slipped down ok, but this was more down to hunger than delicatesse. We had a delightful bbq experience dining with uber hospitable Germans. A fresh, herby, zesty tomato salad made with homegrown onions, cucumber and green and yellow tomatoes, followed by perfectly flame cooked bratwurst. Crispy, smooth skins giving way to tasty meat, accompanied with ketchup, mustard and tzatziki. Stuffed to the gills with tender steaks topped with wild mushrooms softly sauteed and crusty bread with homemade garlic butter, it was all we could do to huddle in the rustic summer house with a few morsels of dark chocolate and plenty of wine and home brewed liqeur. Many crystal tumblers later, we were all suitably sozzled on this wine coloured elixir - the only way to describe it is boozy ribena. Blackcurrants picked and fermented in glass bottles in the sun with just korn (a German colourless spirit) and a dash of brown sugar, this stuff was to die for. Hand luggage prevented me bringing a bottle back, but to be honest it's probably for the best - she was found, in a hazy stupor, lying in a pool of Germany's best blackcurrants…

super fresh salad

steak n shrooms

wine n liqueur

I noticed that the Germans don't appear to be huge fans of dessert. They would rather OD on cream, meat, cheese and booze (lots of it) than faff around with some puff pastry and icing sugar. In fact coffee and cake seems to the be the done thing, and a torte or heavy pie while we're at it. Dining out started and ended with booze, and the menu was brimming with fried schnitzel, pasta, potatoes in various forms, steaks, chicken and soups. A starter soup someone ordered can only be described as a bowl of garlic butter. Portions are generous and filling. Nobody is leaving the table full, or sober, for that matter.

My German weekend was a welcome relief from the busy busy, disposable days of London. I felt like I'd stepped back in time for a weekend. If you get the chance to visit Ilsenburg, I highly recommend it. And don't forget, if you get lost you are not on einbahnstraBe*…

*one way street. We wrongly assumed this sign was the name of the road we were living on. Could prove dangerous when drunk and searching for a signpost which does exist, but many times over!